I do get all sorts of wonderful mail, and I do not share it as often as maybe I should. So here are three more examples, all from the golden world of cyberspace.

The first is from Maria Hachey, who is a translator and friend of translators. In a column, I wondered about how translators do what they do - that level of fluency in two (or three, or four) languages struck me as miraculous.

"As to how we do it, several of us are immigrants. Several of us also start with a different mother tongue than English. In Canada, we have a more formal training than in the U.S. and several of us are raised in bilingual environments. (I'm of French Canadian descent but I learned both French and English at the same age. My education was also bilingual.) That certainly puts us ahead of the game in some ways, but not all of them.

"Translators generally translate from their second (third, etc.) language into their mother tongue. To be fluent in a language for translators specifically refers to their writing skills. In other words, we need to understand the source material in detail, but it's more important to have good writing abilities in our mother tongue.

"So yes, it's quite possible to find translators who translate into more than one pair of languages, but it's difficult for anyone to keep that level of written fluency considering the semantic changes in languages over time. These claims are unlikely to be true unless some specific life circumstances enable these translators to spend significant amounts of time in several countries, enough to absorb the new varieties in a given area and language pair.

"As for the specifics, we have a few different guidelines that we may choose to follow. Generally these are along the lines of the English-Russian debate you mentioned. Do we formulate a passage according to its rhythm? Do we find an equivalent passage in its meaning? Its emotional impact? Do we adapt it to the readers or do we honor the writer's intent? These specifics are up to individual translators and that's how you get entirely different translations, even with the same translator."

I got a letter from Ellen Komp, deputy director of California NORML. I had written a column expressing my worries about pesticides in marijuana, because it's a largely unregulated commodity.

She sent me links to various stories on each subject, together with bullet points, so it all checks out.

"Most marijuana sold in collectives is lab tested these days, and they test for pesticide residues.

"Some local medical marijuana cultivation ordinances, such as the one in El Dorado County, have environmental regulations about water use."

Finally, this charming note from Tom Genelli, reacting to a column about the weather around here:

"As a war-orphaned child in San Francisco (my parents both worked in the defense industries), much of my upbringing in the early 1940s fell upon my beloved Grandpa Joe, an Italian American, ex-professional boxer, cable car conductor, church sexton at St Peter & Paul, widower and all around dapper bon vivant.

"He was a friend to me, from age 7 to 13, more companion than a baby sitter. We would trip the light fantastic over the hills and back alley restaurants of North Beach visiting Grandpa Joe's various cronies, making me privy to information never revealed at my Catholic grammar school. On one particularly hot Sunday Grandpa Joe revealed to me that the fog would return on the next day. He explained that whenever it got too hot in San Francisco the little old Italian ladies at St. Peter & Paul would light candles and the gentle fog would return the next day. From that time I never worried about it when it became too darned hot, assured that on the third day the fogs would return.

"It seems that severe weather patterns have now become the norm. It is not difficult to imagine the tribulations that would follow if the climate regulating fogs were to fail. Climatic change is one thing, but we must also acknowledge the decrease in number of little old Italian ladies who traditionally lit candles at St. Peter & Paul. I have not personally investigated the possible decrease in candles currently being lit but assume the figures would be telling."

The truth revealed about little old Italian ladies in North Beach.

"If everybody minded their own business," the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, "the world would go round a deal faster than jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.